Green IT Toolkit

Story: Is Apple on the way out?

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God, this guy's an idiot. Apple's business has nothing to do with Linux. Nothing. At all.

It has to do with Sony and Microsoft and Virgin Media. And Pepsi and Spin magazine.

See, Apple's in the cool hunting game now. Apple will always sell a small number of systems to computer dorks like me who dig their OS and hardware design (their silly unwillingness to make a two-button mouse/pad notwithstanding). They don't worry one bit about us dyed in the wool MacGeekFreaks, no matter what they QuickTime broadcast during those Nazi rally MacWorld keynotes.

What they worry about is treading that fine line between the ubercool and the consumer consciousness. Apple won't ever be too cool, because that would mean sacrificing the ease of use and ease of marketing combo that's helped the iPod take over the world.

What they will do, for as long as they can, is continue to keep their fingers just ahead of the pulse of mainstream America (yes, America, with Tokyo running a close second ... sorry to Europe, but your tastes are too refined and your tendency to flock to all things hip and American is too predictable, anyway). That way they can wait for early adopters to put out overly complicated, crappy mp3 players, get a whiff of the consumer response, and then put out a sleek, dumbed-down (i.e. "Easy to Use") $400 walkman that everybody wants.

Apple will die out when they can no longer do this. Home computers aren't hip anymore. They were for awhile, and that let the iMac get Apple back in the game. The business systems market was never Apple's thing, and the creative sector died out with the dot com boom/bust of the late 90s.

What's hip now is digital entertainment. Linux is no threat to the iPod. Right now, nobody is a threat to the iPod. So the threat to Apple will come indirectly from the early adopters who put out the crappy early versions of whatever's clever in the future of our digital world.

If media center PCs are it, then Apple has a few months to out-Media Center Microsoft's Media Center 2005. If portable video is it, then Apple has a good six months or so to out-Korean all those Korean companies churning out PMPs (iRiver, Archos, etc).

If you ask me, none of those things are it. I personally have no idea what's next. Apple does. If they're right, they continue to reinvent themselves as a digitally-driven entertainment company -- which is sort of what they've been ever since they lost the education market 15 or so years ago. If they're wrong, they die in the hands of MS, Sony, or whoever capitalizes on the next big thing.

But it's not Linux, man. You've missed the boat entirely. Computing is a consumer commodity. Apple is not about consumer commodity. They're about hip and the premium consumers are willing to pay for the exotic nature of hip.

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